


A Midnight Clear

by blackmare, Nightdog_Barks



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Party, Friendship, Gen, Holidays, Multiverse, Paranoia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 02:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13137414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmare/pseuds/blackmare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks
Summary: Title:A Midnight ClearAuthors:Nightdog_barks and Blackmare.Characters:House, Wilson, a variety of OCsRating:PG-13Warnings:NoSpoilers:NoneSummary:Is House paranoid, or is someone really following him this holiday season?Author Notes:This story is set in the Stationverse; the collected fics of this 'verse are locatedhere. The basic premise:  the universe is a multi-verse, and there are Stations that allow passage between the 'verses.  The Looking Glass Trilogy is the introduction to this ficverse.Cut text is from the 1934 song "Winter Wonderland."Intrepid Reader:Pwcorgigirl





	A Midnight Clear

_As we dream by the fire ..._

 

**_A Midnight Clear_ **

 

It was Christmas Eve, and everything that went along with it.

Chestnuts were roasting on open fires. Yuletide carols were being sung by the choir, and, because this was the hospital's holiday party, the choir was real, as were the chestnuts, the turkey, and some mistletoe. The only thing that didn't match the song were the folks dressed up like Eskimos, because duh, it was a _party_. Besides all that, though, there were tiny tots with their eyes all aglow and toys and goodies on a sleigh, and an open bar and people laughing and smiling and a clandestine poker game that House had been planning on joining later -- later, because with all this, something was _wrong_.

"I'm being followed by Santa Claus," House said. He was serious.

"Sir," the bartender said. "Do you want another bourbon and branch or not?" He sounded very tired, but, then again, it was approaching midnight. 

"You don't understand," House said, and the bartender sighed.

"Sir," he began again, "I'm just the bartender," and that was when Wilson showed up.

"Just what have you been drinking?" Wilson said, and made a show of sniffing at the bourbon.

"Give me that," House growled, and Wilson shrugged and surrendered the glass.

"I'm not drunk," House said, "and I'm not imagining things. This Santa Claus that Cuddy hired is following me."

Wilson held his hands up in a _stop, no more_ motion.

"Let me guess," he said, "the reindeer are Santa's secret agents, and the elves are -- "

"Don't be an idiot." House gulped more of the drink; the bourbon burned going down and he regretted not getting more ice. "Look at him. Look at him now."

Wilson looked. Santa Claus was over by the most majestic of the three Christmas trees -- Cuddy had spared no expense this year -- _ho ho ho-ing_ with an entire contingent of kids from Pediatric Pulmonology. They may have been in rolling hospital beds, but they were all having a great time with Santa.

"He's not even glancing at you," Wilson observed.

"He's been _following me_."

"All right," Wilson said. "All right." He took House's elbow, steered him to an empty table. "Tell me the whole story."

* * *

The night had started innocently enough for a holiday party and a celebration of Princeton-Plainwyck's most successful fiscal year ever. Three lavishly-decorated Christmas trees (for the three kings, House guessed) and a giant menorah dominated the re-purposed conference room. A tableaux of live reindeer with a gaudy sleigh occupied one corner -- party-goers were having their pictures taken with the animals, who blinked in a vaguely startled way at the camera flashes. A band kept up a smooth patter of Christmas classics.

Santa greeted them at the door, and it was only later that House realized the chubby charmer hadn't even asked their names.

"Doctor House! Doctor Wilson!" Santa had boomed, shaking both their hands with his own mitten-gloved ones. "Ho ho ho! What a pleasure! Ho ho ho!"

And ever since then, _Santa_ had been close by -- edging around the sleigh, standing oh-so-casually under the mistletoe, always to keep House in sight, and turning on his heel whenever he realized House was onto his game.

"Just _look_ ," House said.

Wilson looked.

Santa turned quickly away, but after a moment, peeked furtively back over his shoulder.

"Okay, you're not imagining things," Wilson said.

They both watched as Santa pulled a small black notebook from the voluminous interior of one sleeve and flipped it open.

Wilson's brows furrowed. He frowned. "Is he ... a constable?"

Santa made a few swift notations in the little book, then stowed it away again, out of sight.

"He's not a cop." House wasn't sure how he knew, but he knew.

"Well, your team's ignoring him. You didn't mention it?"

"I'm paranoid, not an idiot," House said. "He's _Santa_."

Wilson snorted, but conceded the point. They both knew what would happen. Foreman would be shaking his head, reaching for his phone, where he probably had the hospital psych division on standby. Father Rao? Probably roll his eyes and laugh, certain this was some kind of mind game or prank, and either way, he wasn't playing. Kendall ... too busy sniffing around that new trauma nurse; would blink for a moment and let it roll right past him. That really only left Cuddy, who hired the gig and was probably in on it.

Whatever _it_ was.

"So, yeah, just you," House concluded. He glanced over at Santa again, just in time to see him take ... not the notebook, but what looked like an old-fashioned pocket watch out of the red folds of his coat. He checked it, scowled, and started threading through the tables, off toward the back of the ballroom; the moment had obviously come -- but for what?

"The only door back there is locked," Wilson said. "Founders' Room, being remodeled." And with that, he was already up and moving, intent on following their possible spy. "You coming?"

House was. They caught up soon enough: Santa could barely maneuver his stuffed suit through those last rows of tables with all their chairs pulled out.

* * *

"That ... that is not -- " House began --

"Possible," Wilson provided. "It's ... how could he ...?"

The room was empty, and no matter how many times House looked around, it stayed empty.

He looked down at the tufts of white fur he still had in his grip. He had _had_ the guy, caught him by the sleeve as he pushed through the door that should have been locked, and then ...

And then ...

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he allowed his hand to drift close to the sword at his waist -- ceremonial as it may have been, it still bore a sharp point and whispered to be used, but Wilson touched his wrist, and he stopped.

"Did you see something ... a light?" Wilson said. "It was bright ... like a, a camera flash, or ... something." He began to circle the space, looking for clues in the stripped floor and the freshly-primed walls. House could hear Wilson's sword now, a barely audible soft, sandpaper rasp. Wilson murmured something under his breath, and the sword was quiet.

House started off in the other direction, to the left of the door, doing the same. _Windows_ , he thought, _he went out through a window_ , but those hadn't been restored yet. They were not only latched, but painted shut; an escape artist would need a chisel and an hour. He peered through one of the windows; outside, an empty street, with snow starting to fall. His breath made a patch of fog on the glass. At one end of the street, a traffic light blinked yellow, on and off, on and off.

The main double doors on the opposite wall were locked tight with a deadbolt that required a key.

"There's a mirror in here somewhere," House muttered. "A curtain, a trapdoor, some Donnie Copperfield trick."

They didn't find one.

From the other end of the street, church bells began to toll the hour. It was midnight, and it was Christmas.

_Santa_ had vanished.

* * *

The door to the Station closes behind him with a satisfying _thunk!_ , and Lowery stands there for a moment, breathing deep, letting his body readjust from the shift. A shadow moves in the dark, and he flinches, startled. _Wights!_ he thinks in a panicky rush, and then the shadow speaks. 

"Okay," Murph says. "Mind telling me what you're _really_ doing?"

Lowery resists the urge to actually bottle up a lampwight and introduce Murph to it. Lowery himself has had the pleasure of meeting a wight exactly once. It was the moth-eaten ghost of a coat on a hanger -- a long swirl of smoke, a set of empty eyes. 

He’d barely slept for a month after that.

"I told you," Lowery says, once he has his breath back. "Observing." He pulls at the fake beard; it's been an absolute bitch the whole night and he wants it off, _now_. Predictably, the beard refuses to yield, and he ends up tugging at the ends, growling in frustration.

"You really need help, dude. You know that, right?" Murph stops shaking his head long enough to hold one hand to his ear, fingers curled and thumb extended in the universal sign for _phone call_. "I'll help. I'll make an appointment with the Company shrinks."

"You," Lowery leaves off tugging at the beard long enough to grin. "You're just jealous you didn't think of it first."

"If I knew what you were doing," Murph says, "I _might've_ thought of it first. Because whatever you're doing, it's not _observing_." 

"Look," Lowery says. "You know how much trouble these two have been causing us." He digs a toe of one black boot into the sand, but it's just beach sand, no trace heatwave shimmers that would mean a sandtunnel had formed and dropped extra-temporal junk all over the place.

"These two guys. Our Dopp and Walking Ghost. House and Wilson. _Those_ two guys."

"Those two guys. Look," Lowery says, and he realizes he's saying _look_ again and repeating himself, but he can't help it -- this is _fun_ , and when's the last time he had any real fun? Even with this stupid, intractable beard.

He takes a deep breath. He feels settled enough to head home, so as he walks, Murph beside him, he talks.

"This is a controlled study," he says. "Across the variable universes. If we can _observe_ House in every universe that _House_ exists in, we'll know better how to handle these _Houseian_ emergencies that seem to keep cropping up."

"So you're spying on them."

"Oh, for all the scattered ... _no_. I'm not _spying_ on them."

"Okay. You're not spying on them. How many of these guys are there? We don't even know, do we? Infinite numbers, most likely. How much of your life are you gonna waste on this cockadoodle notion?"

"Of course not every universe! Just ... just a handful. Enough to see if I can discern the pattern that's at work here."

"Lowery," Murph says. "You're nuts, man."

"I'm _not_ nuts. I'm ... "

Lowery stops, one booted foot on the threshold of his cozy cottage. _His_ cottage, that, up until this moment, had been -- 

_"What have you done to my ... what ... "_

It's not the fact that there's already a cheery fire blazing away in the fireplace. It's not the scent of some delicious stew bubbling away on the stove.

It's that the interior of Lowery's cottage has been transformed. Red and green and white garlands of tiny twinkling glowing lights are draped around and over and beneath and _through_ the furniture, over the chairs and tables and wound around the table's legs and over the bookcases and bookshelves and snaking through the lampshades. Garlands of fake plastic greenery loop aggressively over and around the fireplace mantel, and clumps of some green mistletoe with noxious white berries hang suspended from every available corner.

And in one corner ... Lowery blinks.

A Christmas tree, but not just any Christmas tree. An _aluminum_ Christmas tree, all shiny aluminum-foil branches, decorated with shiny blue aluminum balls.

It's the gaudiest, most ridiculous holiday decor Lowery has ever seen. 

"It's beautiful," he says. He means it. Even though it's not Christmas in this shitheap world, won't be for another month, even though Christmas isn't the _custom_ where Lowery comes from, and Murph ... well, Lowery isn't sure _what_ Murph believes. He means it.

Murph beams.

"So," Murph says, with a nod toward the light-festooned cane in the corner, "tell me you're not going to spy on our _primary_ contacts. Or any other versions who might know you."

"Murphy. You wound me." Lowery feels utterly unwounded. "As it happens, I've located a _new_ iteration. That little repair job I did last week? Not a repair. Groundwork. Don't look at me like that; I didn't lie. I simply let you make an assumption." 

"It's not another rescue, is it?"

"I'll thank you to recall which one of us started _that_ trend."

"Zaley," Murph says. "Zaley Bissell, with those kids -- "

"All right," Lowery grumbles. "All right." He sighs. Murph is correct, anyway. "But. No. Not a rescue." He finds himself smiling, just a little. "And unless I'm sorely mistaken, _these_ two don't need it."

They sit in front of the fire with brandies, and Lowery alternates between sipping his drink and dabbing solvent on the adhesive on his face. The Beard — he thinks of it now as if it were a parasitic life form — is losing its grip on him, slowly.

"Zaley said she might stop by later. Said she might bring Justine and Mehmet."

Lowery has to think for a moment before he remembers that Justine is always the tallest person in the room, and Mehmet is a slightly-built guy with a wispy mustache.

"That'll be nice," he says, and wonders why he seems to actually mean it, when this plan of Murph’s has all the warning signs of becoming some kind of _party_.

“Occasionally,” Lowery says, “I am forced to wonder if my skull has gone soft. Too many hours in a certain beachside bar, perhaps.”

"Or, y'know, boss, you're just getting really old,” Murphy replies.

Lowery sighs. "Don't call me that."

"Which one? _Boss_ , or _really old_?" He grins and raises his glass.

“Merry Christmas, Lowery."

"Merry Christmas, Murph."

* * *

The snow was falling fast outside, fat white flakes in a feather-down storm as House and Wilson settled into the comforting warmth of their bungalow. The Christmas tree twinkled merrily in one corner, and, on the mantel, a silver menorah waited for the last night of Hanukkah.

The apartment was quiet as House turned the pages of the little black notebook, formerly in the possession of one Mister _Santa Claus_.

_"Here," Wilson had said, handing it over when they were safely home. "Looks like Santa left you a present after all."_

_He'd grinned at House's surprise. "Found it," he said. "Floor of the ballroom." He'd turned away, fingers working at the buckle of his sword belt. "I'll get the bourbon, you clear off the desk."_

_A log had fallen in the fireplace just then. Sparks flew up, and their rings caught the light,  
golden bands on their left hands, each to each._

The pages were adorned with curlicues, flourishes, straight branches with sticks. It was as if someone had taken the tiny feet of small songbirds -- an erl king, perhaps, or one of the bright winter warblers -- dipped them in ink, and allowed them to run about on the paper.

"Is ... it a code?" Wilson touched the page, gently, and traced a swirling line. "Could that be an apostrophe? A question mark?"

"Repeating symbols," House muttered. "Single-letter words, have to be 'I's or 'a's."

Wilson squinted at it, cocking his head. "You’re sure it’s not a map? Or a ... a star chart? Those three dots -- that could be the Shepherd's Belt."

"Could be, but it isn't." House sketched a new figure in the air, taking in the notebook page. "Other stars don't match. The Great Shepherd has two sheepdogs. See here, and here? One looks like an octopus, and the other ... "

"A drunken llama?" Wilson ventured.

"Could be." House shook his head. "Whatever they are, they aren't dogs."

"So sayeth the master astronomer ... "

"So sayeth the telescope I got when I was ten."

"Okay. How about ... " Wilson took House's hands in his and used them to turn the notebook on its side. "Look at the lines. The pattern. Musical notes?"

"I always knew your piano lessons would pay off one day," House said. He eyed the flock of ink blots and whistled, rising and falling in pitch, following the rising and falling notations.

Nothing happened.

House looked from the book, to his piano, to his favorite guitar, to Wilson. 

"Well, one thing we know," Wilson said. "It'll keep you busy for a good long while." He raised his glass in a mock toast of the little black notebook. "It really is a gift from Saint Nick!" And he raised his glass again, this time in a real salute.

"Merry Christmas, House."

House lifted his glass in turn.

"Merry Christmas, Wilson."

 

~ fin

 

_**Meanwhile, in an entirely different (yet familiar!) universe ...** _

"I still remember stuff sometimes," Wilson says, as they're settling in his nice clean Volvo at the end of a long, long day. "That dog -- Daffodil? The food. Why was the food so good?"

"What food?" House says.

"That food," Wilson says, which really doesn't answer the question, but Wilson's next words give him a clue.

"Today I caught myself wondering if my ex-wife, Lois, ever missed me on Christmas Eve."

"Lois? Unless my math is all wrong, you don't have a fourth ex-wife."

"I think she was his second. Alternate me wasn't any better at this domestic bliss thing."

" _Alternate_ you," House says. "All right." He looks out the window. It gets dark early this time of year. "The dog's name was Buttercup." 

Wilson fires up the engine and drives them home, everything quiet except the windshield wipers shushing away the rain that is turning to snow. At the last stoplight before their turn, House looks at him.

"Think we could find it again?" he asks. There's no question he means that beachside boardwalk, and the Camera Obscura that started it all. 

"Like we would want to? Why?"

"The food?"

Wilson snorts out a laugh.

"Not the food," House allows. "I finally figured out it's where I left my cane. The bitchin' one." House has pulled a packet of red-and-green gummi bears out of his pocket, and Wilson happily accepts a few. They came from Wilson's desk drawer, after all. 

"Yes, I definitely think we should go risk death in an alternate dimension again. Because me buying you a new favorite cane for Christmas would be so much more dangerous than that."

"I don't want a new favorite cane."

"Not even if there's a secret flask for bourbon in the handle?"

A honk startles them out of their conversation; the light must have changed a few seconds ago. 

"There was a beach bar in Narnia," House says, "and a beach bum. I could go back and get my cane and -- "

"It wasn't Narnia."

"Oz, then. Shangri-La. Xanadu." House pops a gummi bear in his mouth. "Choose your imaginary poison," he says around the squishy little treat.

Wilson cocks an eyebrow at him as he flicks the turn signal.

"Or," House says, "or ... " He stops and considers. "Better than a booze cane ... a _sword cane._ "

He has the rare satisfaction of seeing Wilson's jaw literally drop.

"A _what?_ "

"It would be great!" House enthuses, although ... he's not quite sure where the idea actually _came from_. He doesn't need a _sword cane_ ... does he? 

Whatever; Wilson puts an end to it.

"That's enough swashbuckling for you," Wilson says. "No more Errol Flynn movies before bedtime."

"I'll buckle your swash," House mumbles.

Wilson ignores him. "We're here," he says, as he guides the car to a stop. They're home, and it's snowing harder than ever, fat white flakes spinning down out of the dark sky.

From the other end of the street, church bells begin to toll the hour. It's midnight, and it is Christmas.

 

~ fin

 

_**To be continued ...** _


End file.
